Children are illogical and unpredictable little things, but their parents are still among the best-qualified people to calculate their futures.  And when Vint Cerf recently discussed the future of the Internet, much of the conversation focused on the concept of “bigger.”

One of the nice things about not having much money is not having to worry about what might happen to it.  Sliding stock markets, a poor exchange rate – who cares?  Unless, of course, you have something tied up in investments, or are an AdSense publisher who doesn’t live in America.

Online translation tools have their uses, but substituting for an actual translation service when sending diplomatic messages across international borders shouldn’t be one of them.

The European Competition Commission that has vexed Microsoft for years will look at Google’s potential DoubleClick acquisition solely on competitive grounds.

This isn’t a discussion that will necessarily have a neat conclusion – that’s sort of the nature of debate. But A-list bloggers dogpiled on the value, or lack there of, of headlining on TechMeme, and branched out to a more robust discussion about the value of quality (lesser, niche) traffic over the pounding servers get when headlining elsewhere.

Author Roald Dahl, who died in 1990, was responsible for works including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda.  He also wrote some highly entertaining stuff for adults.  And although it’s not the greatest honor ever given, the author is now being celebrated with a Google doodle.

The company’s Google Apps collection of productivity software will be the thin end of the wedge Google hopes to drive between corporations and their long-time love of Microsoft Office.

Here’s a brilliant financial guideline by which most people live: don’t spend more money than you have.  But when a UK bank tried to enforce that guideline by charging interest on overdrafts, a big, Facebook-style fuss erupted.  An interesting resolution then occurred: the Facebook users won.

The MCPS-PRS Alliance is a UK organization with over 50,000 members; the organization exists to deliver royalties to its members, who are mainly music writers, composers and publishers.  And according to a new deal, some of those royalties will come from YouTube.

I’ve often had to raise an eyebrow at Facebook’s “cause” groups – African warlords aren’t going to chill out just because a bunch of college kids tell them to.  Odds are excellent that no warlords will even read the students’ pleas.  But Cadbury apparently heard – and listened – to demands for the Wispa candy bar’s return.

Backfence.com folded about a month ago, and many onlookers interpreted that as a death knell for hyperlocal news sites.  The “participatory news network” of NowPublic is doing just fine, however – the company has received $10.6 million in funding.

A lot of big companies – from Google to CNN – are interested in “going local,” and, to be honest, it seems that those companies have the money to do whatever they want.  But “going local” isn’t easy; Backfence.com, which focused on a number of smaller communities, is going out of business.

Blinkx is a top-of-the-line video search engine, but the people who run it might want to consider a new line of work.  After all, following Blinkx’s launch on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), the company raked in exactly what they predicted: 25 million pounds.  Yes, those guys (and gals) would do quite well on the stock market.